DIARY OF AN OXYGEN THIEF By Anonymous (The Oxygen Thief Diaries) by Anonymous

Author:Anonymous [Anonymous]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: V Publishing
Published: 2010-01-03T00:00:00+00:00

3.

She was about a half hour late, but she looked fucking lovely. Black V-neck sweater, black pants, black shoes. Very Prada. Long hazel hair billowing behind her as she came through the door. She looked familiar, like I'd known her before. Like some sister I used to have and lost.

So clean, young and adult at the same time. From the moment she walked through the door, my biggest challenge was to hide from her how strongly she affected me. She came towards me with, I think, the intention of leaning to my left for what I was to learn was the obligatory New York peck on the cheek. Never heard tell of such a thing in St Lacroix.

Those eyes.

This is going to sound awful, but I don't care. I'm way past embarrassment.

You can't hurt a man with a pinprick when he's already got a spear in his chest. I swear to you that she looked just like the pictures of the Virgin Mary in Irish Catholic homes.

I kid you not.

The Virgin Fuckin' Mary.

“You look great,” I said, motioning towards the hostess-stand.

“Thanks, so do you.”

That was her first lie. We strode into the arena. All brown leather and tea-stained tiles. This was Friday night. I was to fly back to you-know-where the next morning. It was quite busy so we didn't get the booth. But we got a nice enough table. She was not stupid. That much was very clear, very quickly.

This was no twenty-two, twenty-three or even twenty-four-year-old inexperienced bimbo. She talked older than she looked. I really was thrown by that. I was expecting to spend the evening deflecting compliments of such enormity that I would find myself hating her for her lack of subtlety. Instead, I ended up kicking myself for mine. And it was too late. I couldn't suddenly wake up and say, “Oh, I didn't realize you were intelligent. I thought you were a stupid fawning child unworthy of my best game.”

She must have seen everything she needed to see in the first fifteen minutes of my unbelievably self-centered diatribe. Slowly, almost considerately, she let me know how much I'd shown myself up. She’d already attended exhibitions I’d only begun to read about. Films I’d heard about were already memories to her. And I would never have realised that I’d mispronounced the names of foreign artists until she pronounced them.

Her superiority was graceful, though sympathetic even. Talk about being wrong-footed. Of course, I've since attributed every little nuance in that evening's conversation to her devilish manipulative skills, but the truth is that when someone outshines me, I hide my anger by putting them on a pedestal. This makes me seem generous so that when I want to put the knife in I’ll be trusted. Yes, sometimes I even scare myself.

Anyway, she went on to tell me that she was from Killiney in Dublin. I found out much later that this is an extremely well-off area. And that her brother worked in London and her sister was married in Spain and that she herself had been in New York over a year.

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